It's 2018. We Can Do Better.

It's time to take safety into the future. As former Chair of WSIB, I've seen safety evolve over time from babies in the front seats of cars and hockey played without helmets to today where, as a country, we have continued to increase our knowledge, focus, and funding to drive safer outcomes in the workplace and in our homes.

What I have not seen evolve much in the past decade is how we track safety training. It's become clear that as rules and regulations increase with the collective effort of governing a safer workplace, which includes regulatory standards, industry standards, functional job standards, employer standards, and more, tracking and accessing the required safety training remains behind the times. Not only is this effort behind the times, but we are spending more time on paperwork and searching for lost wallet cards than improving the training itself. Administration within the safety training space has sky-rocketed over the past several years bringing workplaces to a standstill, quite literally - if a worker shows up to a job-site and has misplaced his or her wallet card proving they are properly trained they are denied site access and lose their wages, work initiatives slow or come to a halt completely, and training providers are constantly asked to reproduce and validate training they have already done. Everybody involved suffers.

It's 2018. We can do better.

Luckily, about a year and a half ago, I was approached by Bluedrop Learning Networks. A technology company based out of Newfoundland & Labrador. They are solving this very problem with a solution called SkillsPass. It was very easy for me to join forces as their Strategic Advisor to help be part of this bigger movement to change the way that safety training is tracked and shared.

This technology platform puts Training Providers in the driver’s seat, ensuring the SkillsPass database has the most valid data available. Records go directly into the system and workers immediately have access to them on their phones. All of their training can be found within their SkillsPass profile. eCerts have finally arrived for safety training! And they follow the worker as they move from to new job sites or employers. Empowering our working population in this way will not only benefits the workers, but also employers. Employers also have immediate access to those training records when they send them for training. Real-time transparency to ensure your workforce is properly trained and supported by a notification system that will ensure certifications don’t expire.

Current efforts are focused on supporting Safety Training Providers in Canada, and more specifically in Ontario and anyone who conducts safety training. SkillsPass should be the system you use to track and share that training. Building a central network and sharing our collective responsibility to send workers home safe at the end of the day starts with Training Providers. They are the source of training and in order to create transparency that is so desperately needed to relieve administrative burdens across the country, SkillsPass empowers them to be the gatekeepers of the network. Join the movement and get your training records into SkillsPass. The time you save should be redirected to taking the training itself into the future.